Like Needles In My Eyes (1)

You're all big boys now, Sony, so I'm not going to sugarcoat this: I hate Planetside 2. However, before you write this thread off as just another fanboy ******** about not enough vehicles or continents, hear me out. I actually like the game. Unfortunately, there are two big things that take what would otherwise be a great game with a lot of potential, and turn it into something that feels like a chore.

1)There is no penalty for death of any kind and therefore creates a death system with no meaning.
2)Most importantly, there are too many little outposts across the map and it creates a state of slog. I will be covering the latter in this post.

The Original:
In the original Planetside, each continent would have a dozen large facilities with a few towers spread out across the rest of the world. When one faction was preparing the conquest of a new continent, they would gather their forces at the sanctuary in a massive army, and then roll through the warpgate to a new continent. Then they would blitz through one or two bases before the enemy zerg could react, but would then get the attention of whoever owned those bases. The enemy zerg would gather their forces at the nearest base and ride out to meet the attackers. The two zergs would meet somewhere in the field between the facilities, and a massive battle would ensue in which both sides would fight desperately to gain ground, inch by inch. Both sides would have to correctly employ their advantages in number, terrain and tactics to push the enemy back to their base and maybe even capture it by the skin of their teeth.

By this point, the losers would have to retreat to the nearest friendly facility and gather a new zerg army and the victors would likely by so disheveled that they would also have to rebuild their army before setting out into the field again. Then they’d both ride out to meet each other again and the cycle would repeat.

What this system did, was create battles that would last for hours and even days sometimes and when you won and captured a base it felt like it meant something. There was never a slog feeling to it; it all flowed very naturally and made me feel like I really was embroiled in a sci-fi war.

One zerg would roll through the warpgate and blitz through the first base or two before alerting the defending faction.

The defending faction would gather their army and ride out to meet the oncoming threat in the field. This would result in a tug-of-war-style battle that could last for hours and even days.

Eventually, one faction would win and both would gather their armies again to repeat the process.

Planetside 2’s Problem:

The reason we never get this feeling in Planetside 2 is really quite simple: there are too many little outposts all over every continent. These little bases break the flow of battle every 100 yards turn a great war simulator into a slogfest in which both sides just take turns spawn-camping the other.

They have to go. What happens in the current Planetside is that a faction will gather a zerg army, ride out to hit the nearest enemy outpost, swamp the defenders and then wait 5 minutes while they camp the spawn room. Then, when the outpost caps, they ride 100 yards to the next outpost and then proceed to swamp the defenders and wait five minutes of spawn camping waiting for the outpost to cap. Rinse and repeat.

We never get the signature Planetside open-field battles because there isn’t enough time of travel between the facilities for the zergs to gather large armies and there isn’t enough space between them for there to be a significant battle between the outposts.

What this means is that 90% of the time you are either being spawn-camped or doing the spawn-camping. Neither of these possibilities are fun. All the little outposts create an unnatural slog of spawn-camping and it makes the maps feel small.

The worst part is that I know for a fact that the game can actually succeed in creating those rich open-field battles that I loved from the original. One of the best moments in Planetside 2 was when my platoon leader organized us into a squad and we had to fight our way across the plains between Indar Excavation and Quartz ridge trying to get to the base while fighting from rock formation to rock formation. It was actually a fun experience; the problem is that it’s too infrequent. It happens only once in a rare while and never for more than a few minutes at most.

The game feels like eating a bowl of horse food because you know that there are a few specks of sugar in it. There are a few sweet moments, but most of the time is spent slogging through the gross stuff waiting for that to happen.

But, if you get rid of all the little outposts you can increase the distance between each capturable area and effectively recreate these large battles that the original was famous for. The only outposts you need are the three towers that surround the bases and the occasional hub post like J908 or The Octagon. Everything else needs to go.

You don’t even have to delete the bases altogether. You can leave the actual buildings as additional terrain elements to be fought over as a vantage point for infantry. You just can’t keep them as capturable bases that you have to stop for because all they do is take make the flow of the game choppy, boring and tiring. For example, you can leave the buildings from Indar Excavation standing as a place for infantry to take cover from the air and armor attacks and maybe even leave one or two infantry terminals, but it shouldn’t be capturable and you shouldn’t be able to spawn air or armor from it.

The little bases aren’t even that interesting either. Sure, there are a few bases that have cool layouts and terrain but the majority look like they were just copy n’ pasted again and again and again. They’re not interesting to fight over and just serve to break the flow of the game.

Also, you have to delete the vehicle spawners, infantry respawn points, and infantry terminals on all outposts and only leave the vehicle resupply pads on a select few outposts. The reason for this is that the little outposts should only be a terrain advantage and shouldn’t serve as a place to rebuild your armies. That should only be reserved for the largest bases. The vehicle spawners on the hub outposts and the outposts around the large bases should only be able to spawn a flash at the most. They shouldn’t be a place to gather a new tank column, only a place to rearm and repair an existing one. That said, you can still leave things like vehicle shield generators that block all passage except to those who hack them. In this case, a base like Howling Pass Checkpoint can keep its shield generators but not its spawners for infantry or vehicles. This way, one army can seize the neutral base, repurpose its shield generators and then use the base to give them the edge when the enemy zerg attempts to come down through that pass. The turrets should not work though, or at least shouldn’t be as powerful as those on an official outpost or bases.

By making all the outposts neutral and uncapturable, you will make the game flow better and will effectively destroy any slog factor the game has left, making it a much more enjoyable experience. It will reassert the necessity for tactics and ambushes and make it feel like a living breathing war. Nobody likes spawn camping every 100 yards and by forcing us to do so, you break immersion and create an incredibly boring and tiring experience.

There are dozens of things this game still needs that will make it cool, but unless you fix the big problem of the broken flow, you will never have even a decent game.

Please fix this.

This map shows all the outposts that should stay and all the ones that should go. The Bad outposts are colored in with a red “X” and the good ones are circled in blue.

I couldn't agree more. I still like the game, but it does break down into spawn hopping too much.

I like your suggesting to leave the outpost geometry and remove the ability to capture or spawn (players or vehicles). Leaving infantry terminals, turrets, and shields would be OK in my mind. You would still be able to "take" the bases, but you wouldn't have to sit there for 5 minutes doing what amounts to chores while the cap goes down. If there's a sundy there, you neutralize it, hack the terms, and move on. With a well organized group it could take a minute.
Also, this gives you the tactical choice to circumnavigate one of these outposts even if there is a force there.

“We never get the signature Planetside open-field battles because there isn’t enough time of travel between the facilities for the zergs to gather large armies and there isn’t enough space between them for there to be a significant battle between the outposts.

What this means is that 90% of the time you are either being spawn-camped or doing the spawn-camping. Neither of these possibilities are fun. All the little outposts create an unnatural slog of spawn-camping and it makes the maps feel small.”

^pretty much this

you know, back in december 2012 i made the switch from BF3 to PS2 just because of the large-scale mass battles that have been promised to us in this game. but around one month ago i finally switched back to BF4 (with the beta) because the concept of large-scale warfare in PS2 is incredibly flawed in itself: it's usually either 'zerg or get zerged', that is, spawncamping a tower/ampstation/base until takeover or being part of a massive army against too few opponents or getting hopelessly crushed by a massive enemy presence with no chance of retaliating properly. the last part is especially evident on servers where there's a huge population imbalance which again deteriorates the situation even more

PS2 is still fun at times but i just dont feel like it is really up to the task of delivering unprecedented fun and balanced large-scale battles that last far longer than most one-sided 5-minute engagements in the game right now

I might be up for something like this. I agree that rolling into a base 200 meters away, waiting five to ten minutes as the defenders have their faces rolled, then doing it again a few dozen times makes for boring gameplay. I remember some good battles that occurred in the field on Waterson and I'd like to see more of those. Zerging with an outfit is good for certs and nothing more.

This shouldn't be hard to implement on the test server. It's a matter of removing a bunch of spawn points and terminals and watching what happens. The devs might consider it depending on how Hossin plays out when it's finished.

They definitely could do with removing like... half of the bases and moving to a "tower, tower, base, tower, tower, facility" type focus like in PS1. Would much rather fewer more fleshed out bases with terrain in between that's interesting to fight on. Would give more room for the resource "nodes" that should come in with the resource revamp too.

Agreed, but the other fact is that Hossin isn't as big as the other three continents so there's that.

I still think there are a few small outposts that don't really serve too much of a purpose on Hossin and could be done away with.

That said, there are definitely a lot more interesting outposts on Hossin (fewer of the copy and paste ones we have on Indar, Esamir and Amerish) and the harsh terrain will make travel times much longer which will give defenders more time to gather larger armies. This will also be helped if the terrain that's covered in puddles will physically slow vehicle movement speeds.

I only play Planetside 2 once or twice a week, if that at the moment...pretty much just for clan events. This would actually give me a reason to get back into it properly as I haven't seen any real fights in a good while. I understand the whole zerg lane thing can promote bigger fights but I haven't really seen any good ones. Its usually just one side farming another.

Would love to see less focus on spawn rooms and more on sunderers and spawn beacons as you would expect to come out of changes like this. Good stuff.

Unfortunately it requires some pretty significant game changes so its probably wishful thinking. I don't know if Sony is brave enough to make such fundamental changes to their gameplay (though I hope they are).

I actually like the way Amerish caps. It still has too many territories but I like the mechanic that you can cap small outposts without having to possess the hex they are in.
Implement that for Indar and remove the vehicle terminals on the small outposts and the continent will play much better.

So, like an arcade Arma 3, instead of the deathmatch zerg spawncamp fest it is now. Yeah I kinda like this idea.

I can see some problems though. There's been hour-long moments like this on Indar for me, where infantry try to jump between rocks in a desperate attempt to get closer to a base 800m away, snipers wait for something to pop out, and tanks linger on hills taking pot shots.
None wanting to get too close to the other in fear of the firepower that awaits, and I find this really, really dull.
It's also open-season for snipers, MANA turrets, anyone with AOE weapons and ESF rocket pods.

Also, with no way to respawn except back at HQ/a nearby sunderer, this makes medics and sunderers the number 1 target and the most important thing on the map. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I'm reminded of those Vanu Archive moments where I look at my teammates huddled around a corner, and all I see is one heavy, a MAX, an engineer, and about 5 medics. There's gonna be a lot of medics and not much shooting.

I'd suggest myself that we have different continents fulfill different roles. Indar for it's arcadey spawncampy outpost hopping, and Hossin perhaps as a world of coordinated war and deeper restrictions, but as much as I like to play for fun, I also want certs. I can never have enough certs, and I want to go where the most certs can be got.

It's a great idea that makes my skin tight Vanu armour develop a leathery squeak due to my excited wetness, but it'd need some good thought put into it.

“I couldn't agree more. I still like the game, but it does break down into spawn hopping too much.

I like your suggesting to leave the outpost geometry and remove the ability to capture or spawn (players or vehicles). Leaving infantry terminals, turrets, and shields would be OK in my mind. You would still be able to "take" the bases, but you wouldn't have to sit there for 5 minutes doing what amounts to chores while the cap goes down. If there's a sundy there, you neutralize it, hack the terms, and move on. With a well organized group it could take a minute.
Also, this gives you the tactical choice to circumnavigate one of these outposts even if there is a force there.”

I suggested something similar except all terminals would be neutral and would have to be hacked by an Infiltrator. This gives them the only means of allowing spawn/vehicle logistics between bases (which there will be less of). Basically, it'll put more importance on Infil Hacking and give thema reason to be in a platoon.

Certing hacking would increase the time before the terminal flips back by half a minute, 1 minute at the default. Spawn rooms would have no shields and S-AMS with Stealth would act as a soft spawn. Once that spawn is eliminated, the base only needs to be sweeped and it's done.

1) Indar was meant to be a test continent. It went live because someone pushed the game to release early. (I'm guessing investors).

2) 100% agree with OP. Need DP and fewer bases.

DP doesn't have to be as long as PS1. Heck, it can even get reduced faster than in PS1. (PS1 max DP was what 25 seconds?). Now it's only 6-10 seconds. Increase rapid respawns by 1 second up to 15-17 seconds. Decrease the penalty by a couple ways:

- Killing 2 or 3 enemies will reduce that timer down by 1 second.
- Surviving more than 1 minute reduces it by 1 second. Then 3 (that is First min+2m) , another second. Then every 3 minutes reduces it another after that.
- Killing an enemy on a killing spree can reduce it by another second.

My personal opinion, I would love to see searhus have this structure for us to test. PS1 style maps. However being the devil's advocate, we don't know know the technical feasibility of what we are asking for. It could be a mess of an army popping 30 meters infront of you bc there are so many people.

I would only welcome a playtest of this map type when OMFG is 100% complete with hardcore optimizations.

about death penalty,how about make it like starwars battlefront/(idk never played)battlefield so the middle area beetwen 2 major facility have 2 spawn so basicly to win the fight the fighting faction must cap both point to prevent spawn, also make the area considered neutral and each spawn have x number of how many person can spawn there, at default make it 50-60, to increase the number of spawn you must bring ams over there ams increase the spawn number by 20 and regenerate each 3-5 minute, once the middle zone cap it can be use to stage attack to the main facility,to just to make people fight outside, anykind of spawn outside the middle base and the 2 big facility must be removed,this way transportation will have its use, so basicly any faction who can win the figth at the middle ground will have the high ground on the fight.

Removing the smaller outpost is a great idea, i have never understood the generally outpost design: Why must the spawbuildings always be up the surface and campable by vehicles? My wishes for Planetside 2: Remove the small outposts and replace it with a few well designed bigger outposts, but not only towers. For example: When i think about a mining outpost, i dont think about a spawnbuiding and a few other boring buildings (Which are always the same over the map). When i think about a mining outpost, i think about a big mining complex, which is build in a big mountain or hill on indar. The entrance is a very big door which leads in a hangar, a huge mining machine/Robocop stands around and u can see auraxium between the stones. There are a few side/backentrances and tunnelsystems to flank the defenders. In my opinion, we dont need hossin and the battleisland, the current maps needs redesigns, and there are so much things to do better....